[…] In our 12th episode Kate Valentine and Fahrusha interview Ellen Hodgson Brown an American author, political candidate, attorney, public speaker, and advocate of alternative medicine and financial reform, most prominently public banking. As synchronicity would have it, we discuss her 12th book, Web of Debt. […]

I am reading Web of Debt and learning a lot. But I have this question;
Someone wants to buy a house, so they need a loan. The bank says, O.K., here’s the “money”. The home buyer pays the original owner with the “money”. I gather that the banking system recognizes that a fiat transaction from a bank, then, is real money.

Then the new home buyer pays back the principal & Interest over 30 years, to the bank. The bank keeps all this? They now have all this money as their own?

Hi Daniel, when the bank makes a loan, it just writes the sum as an advance in the borrower’s account. When the loan is paid off, the balance in the account goes back to zero, but the bank keeps the interest. The bank does have to balance its own books though. If the borrower writes a check on his account that goes into another bank, the first bank has to come up with the “reserves” to cover the check. But if the bank doesn’t have the reserves, it can borrow them cheaply at bankers’ rates from another bank or the Federal Home Loan Banks or the money market. It’s a good deal for the bank but not without costs and risks.

948. May 17, Interview on Al Jazeera, in which Ellen Brown gives her critique of President Trump’s approach to infrastructure. Part of coverage of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Infrastructure Week”. Watch it here.

947. May 13, Bring On the Power of a Public Bank for CA: People’s Forum, L.A., 3 pm. Info here. At the beautiful PUENTE Learning Center DTLA in Boyle Heights: https://www.puente.org/locations/

946. May 2, presentation, The Web of Debt and the Deep State: How do we break Free? Info here.